All is well as long as the sun shines and the fair breath of heaven gently wafts us to our own purposes. But if you will try the excellency and feel the work of faith, place the man in a persecution; let him ride in a storm; let his bones be broken with sorrow, and his eyelids loosed with sickness; let his bread be dipped with tears, and all the daughters of music be brought low; let us come to sit upon the margin of our grave, and let a tyrant lean hard upon our fortunes and dwell upon our wrong; let the storm arise, and the keels toss till the cordage crack, or that all our hopes bulge under us, and descend into the hollowness of sad misfortunes.

That which thou dost not understand when thou readest, thou shalt understand in the day of thy visitation. For many secrets of religion are not perceived till they be felt, and are not felt but in the day of a great calamity.

Ambition is full of distractions; it teems with stratagems, and is swelled with expectations as with a tympany. It sleeps sometimes as the wind in a storm, still and quiet for a minute, that it may burst out into an impetuous blast till the cordage of his heart-strings crack.

There is no greater unreasonableness in the world than in the designs of ambition; for it makes the present certainly miserable, unsatisfied, troublesome, and discontented, for the uncertain acquisition of an honour which nothing can secure; and, besides a thousand possibilities of miscarrying, it relies upon no greater certainty than our life: and when we are dead all the world sees who was the fool.

God is pleased with no music below so much as in the thanksgiving songs of relieved widows, of supported orphans, of rejoicing, and comforted, and thankful persons. This part of our communication does the work of God and of our neighbours, and bears us to heaven in streams made by the overflowing of our brothers comfort.

All those instances of charity which usually endear each other, sweetness of conversation, affability, frequent admonition, all signification of love, tenderness, care, and watchfulness, must be expressed towards children.

Christ gave us his spirit to enable us to suffer injuries, and made that the parts of suffering evils should be the matter of three or four Christian graces,of patience, of fortitude, of longanimity, and perseverance.

There is a great measure of discretion to be used in the performance of confession, so that you neither omit it when your own heart may tell you that there is something amiss, nor overscrupulously pursue it when you are not conscious to yourself of notable failings.

Be not confident and affirmative in an uncertain matter, but report things modestly and temperately, according to the degree of that persuasion which is or ought to be begotten by the efficacy of the authority or the reason inducing thee.

At doomsday, when the terrors are universal, besides that it is in itself so much greater, because it can affright the whole world, it is also made greater by communication and a sorrowful influence; grief being then strongly infectious when there is no variety of state, but an entire kingdom of fear; and amazement is the king of all our passions, and all the world its subjects. And that shriek must needs be terrible when millions of men and women, at the same instant, shall fearfully cry out, and the noise shall mingle with the trumpet of the archangel, with the thunders of the dying and groaning heavens, and the crack of the dissolving world, when the whole fabric of nature shall shake into dissolution and eternal ashes!

Take away but the pomps of death, the disguises and solemn bugbears, and the actings by candlelight, and proper and fantastic ceremonies, the minstrels and the noise-makers, the women and the weepers, the swoonings and the shriekings, the nurses and the physicians, the dark room and the ministers, the kindred and the watches, and then to die is easy, ready, and quitted from its troublesome circumstances. It is the same harmless thing that a poor shepherd suffered yesterday, or a maid-servant to-day; and at the same time in which you die, in that very night a thousand creatures die with you, some wise men and many fools; and the wisdom of the first will not quit him, and the folly of the latter does not make him unable to die.

For the death of the righteous is like the descending of ripe and wholesome fruits from a pleasant and florid tree. Our senses entire, our limbs unbroken, without horrid tortures; after provision made for our children, with a blessing entailed upon posterity, in the presence of our friends, our dearest relatives closing our eyes and binding our feet, leaving a good name behind us.

All our duty is set down in our prayers, because in all our duty we beg the divine assistance, and remember that you are bound to do all those duties for the doing of which you have prayed for the divine assistance.

Men are miserable if their education hath been so undisciplined as to leave them unfurnished of skill to spend their time; but most miserable if such misgovernment and unskilfulness make them fall into vicious company.

The truly virtuous do not easily credit evil that is told them of their neighbours; for if others may do amiss, then may these also speak amiss: man is frail, and prone to evil, and therefore may soon fail in words.

Let us always bear about us such impressions of reverence, and fear of God, that we may humble ourselves before his almightiness, and express that infinite distance between his infiniteness and our weaknesses.

Certain it is, that as nothing can better do it, so there is nothing greater for which God made our tongues, next to reciting his praises, than to minister comfort to a weary soul. And what greater measure can we have than that we should bring joy to our brother, who with his dreary eyes looks to heaven and round about, and cannot find so much rest as to lay his eyelids close togetherthan that thy tongue should be tuned with heavenly accents, and make the weary soul to listen for light and ease; and when he perceives that there is such a thing in the world, and in the order of things, as comfort and joy, to begin to break out from his sorrows at the door of sighs and tears, and by little and little melt into showers and refreshment? This is glory to thy voice, and employment fit for the brightest angel . So is the heart of a sorrowful man under the discourses of a wise comforter: he breaks from the despairs of the grave, and the fetters and chains of sorrow; he blesses God, and he blesses thee, and he feels his life returning: for to be miserable is death, but nothing is life but to be comforted, and God is pleased with no music from below so much as in the thanksgiving songs of relieved widows, of supported orphans, of rejoicing, and comforted, and thankful persons.

All the world, all that we ate, and all that we have, our bodies and our souls, our actions and our sufferings, our conditions at home, our accidents abroad, our many sins, and our seldom virtues, are so many arguments to make our souls dwell low in the deep valley of humility.

No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence. A just man does justice to every man and to every thing; and then, if he be also wise, he knows there is a debt of mercy and compassion due to the infirmities of mans nature; and that is to be paid: and he that is cruel and ungentle to a sinning person, and does the worst to him, dies in his debt and is unjust. Pity, and forbearance, and long-sufferance, and fair interpretation, and excusing our brother, and taking in the best sense, and passing the gentlest sentences, are as certainly our duty, and owing to every person that does offend and can repent, as calling to account can be owing to the law, and are first to be paid; and he that does not so is an unjust person.

The experience of those profitable emanations from God most commonly are the first motive of our love; but when we once have tasted his goodness we love the spring for its own excellency; passing from considering ourselves to an union with God.

Some married persons, even in their marriage, do better please God than some virgins in their state of virginity: they, by giving great examples of conjugal affection, by preserving their faith unbroken, and by educating children in the fear of God, please God in a higher degree than those virgins whose piety is not answerable to their opportunities.

Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit; and our wandering thoughts in prayer are but the neglects of meditation and recessions from that duty; and according as we neglect meditation so are our prayers imperfect,meditation being the soul of prayer and the intention of our spirit.

The love of money is a vertiginous pool, sucking all into it to destroy it. It is troubled and uneven, giddy and unsafe, serving no end but its own, and that also in a restless and uneasy motion. But the love of God is a holy fountain, limpid and pure, sweet and salutary, lasting and eternal. The love of God spends itself upon Him, to receive again the reflections of grace and benediction: the love of money spends all its desires upon itself, to purchase nothing but unsatisfying instruments of exchange or supernumerary provisions, and ends in dissatisfaction, emptiness of spirit, and a bitter curse.

Parents must give good example and reverent deportment in the face of their children. And all those instances of charity which usually endear each othersweetness of conversation, affability, frequent admonitionall significations of love and tenderness, care and watchfulness, must be expressed towards children; that they may look upon their parents as their friends and patrons, their defence and sanctuary, their treasure and their guide.

Look upon pleasures not upon that side that is next the sun, or where they look beauteously; that is as they come towards you to be enjoyed; for then they paint and smile, and dress themselves up in tinsel, and glass gems, and counterfeit imagery.

Prayer is the peace of our spirit, the stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of recollection, the seat of meditation, the rest of our cares, and the calm of our tempest: prayer is the issue of a quiet mind, of untroubled thoughts; it is the daughter of charity, and the sister of meekness; and he that prays to God with an angry, that is, with a troubled and discomposed, spirit, is like him that retires into a battle to meditate, and sets up his closet in the out-quarters of an army, and chooses a frontier-garrison to be wise in.

Do not omit thy prayers for want of a good oratory: for he that prayeth on Gods account cares not what he suffers, so he be the friend of Christ; nor where nor when he prays, so he may do it frequently, fervently, and acceptably.

There is no greater argument in the world of our spiritual weakness, and the falseness of our hearts in matters of religion, than the backwardness most men have always, and all men sometimes, to say their prayers; so weary of their length, so glad when they are done, so ready to find an excuse, so apt to lose an opportunity. Yet it is no labour, no trouble, they are thus anxious to avoid, but the begging a blessing and receiving it: honouring our God, and by so doing honouring ourselves too.

Mental prayer, when our spirits wander, is like a watch standing still because the spring is down: wind it up again, and it goes on regularly. But in vocal prayer, if the words run on and the spirit wanders, the clock strikes false, the hand points not to the right hour, because something is in disorder, and the striking is nothing but noise. In mental prayer we confess Gods omniscience, in vocal prayer we call angels to witness. In the first, our spirits rejoice in God; in the second, the angels rejoice in us. Mental prayer is the best remedy against lightness and indifferency of affections, but vocal prayer is the aptest instrument of communion. That is more angelical, but yet is fittest for the state of separation and glory; this is but human, but it is apter for our present constitution. They have their distinct proprieties, and may be used according to several accidents, occasions, or dispositions.

If these little sparks of holy fire which I have thus heaped up together do not give life to your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet they will sometimes help to entertain a thought, to actuate a passion, to employ and hallow a fancy.

Begin every day to repent; not that thou shouldst ever defer it; but all that is past ought to seem little to thee, seeing it is so in itself. Begin the next day with the same zeal, fear, and humility, as if thou hadst never begun before.

A pure and simple revenge does in no way restore man towards the felicity which the injury did interrupt. For revenge is but doing a simple evil, and does not, in its formality, imply reparation; for the mere repeating of our own right is permitted to them that will do it by charitable instruments. All the evils of human felicity are secured without revenge, for without it we are permitted to restore ourselves; and therefore it is against natural reason to do an evil that no way co-operates the proper and perfective end of human nature. And he is a miserable person whose good is the evil of his neighbour; and he that revenges, in many cases, does worse than he that did the injury; in all cases as bad.

While thou art well thou mayest do much good; but when thou art sick thou canst not tell what thou shalt be able to do: it is not very much or very good. Few men mend with sickness, as there are but few who by travel and a wandering life become devout.

I have seen the little purls of a spring sweat through the bottom of a bank, and intenerate the stubborn pavement, till it hath made it fit for the impression of a childs foot; and it was despised, like the descending pearls of a misty morning, till it had opened its way and made a stream large enough to carry away the ruins of the undermined strand, and to invade the neighbouring gardens: but then the despised drops were grown into an artificial river, and an intolerable mischief. So are the first entrances of sin stopped with the antidotes of a hearty prayer, and checked into sobriety by the eye of a reverend man, or the counsels of a single sermon: but when such beginnings are neglected, and our religion hath not in it so much philosophy as to think anything evil as long as we can endure it, they grow up to ulcers and pestilential evils; they destroy the soul by their abode, who at their first entrance might have been killed with the pressure of a little finger. He that hath passed many stages of a good life, to prevent his being tempted to a single sin, must be very careful that he never entertain his spirit with the remembrances of his past sin, nor amuse it with the fantastic apprehensions of the present. When the Israelites fancied the sapidness and relish of the flesh-pots, they longed to taste and to return.

No man can make another man to be his slave unless he hath first enslaved himself to life and death, to pleasure or pain, to hope or fear: command those passions, and you are freer than the Parthian king.

Spend not your time in that which profits not: for your labour and your health, your time and your studies, are very valuable; and it is a thousand pities to see a diligent and hopeful person spend himself in gathering cockle-shells and little pebbles, in telling sands upon the shores, and making garlands of useless daisies. Study that which is profitable, that which will make you useful to churches and commonwealths, that which will make you desirable and wise. Only I shall add this to you, that in learning there are variety of things as well as in religion: there is mint and cummin, and there are the weighty things of the law; so there are studies more and less useful, and everything that is useful will be required in its time: and I may in this also use the words of our blessed Saviour, These things ought you to look after, and not to leave the other unregarded. But your great care is to be in the things of God and of religion, in holiness and true wisdom, remembering the saying of Origen, That the knowledge that arises from goodness is something that is more certain and more divine than all demonstration, than all other learnings of the world.

Every man rejoices twice when he has a partner of his joy; a friend shares my sorrow and makes it but a moiety; but he swells my joy and makes it double. For so two channels divide the river, and lessen it into rivulets, and make it fordable, and apt to be drunk up by the first revels of the Sirian star; but two torches do not divide but increase the flame: and though my tears are the sooner dried up when they run on my friends cheeks in the furrows of compassion, yet when my flame hath kindled his lamp we unite the glories and make them radiant, like the golden candlesticks that burn before the throne of God, because they shine by numbers, by unions, and confederations of light and joy.

No man can be provident of his time that is not provident in the choice of his company; and if one of the speakers be vain, tedious, and trifling, he that hears and he that answers are equal losers of their time.

All men resolved upon this, that, though they had not yet hit upon the right, yet some way must be thought upon to reconcile differences in opinion; thinking so long as this variety should last, Christs kingdom was not advanced, and the work of the gospel went on but slowly. Few men, in the mean time, considered, that so long as men had such variety of principles, such several constitutions, educations, tempers, and distempers, hopes, interests, and weaknesses, degrees of light and degrees of understanding, it was impossible all should be of one mind. And what is impossible to be done, is not necessary it should be done.

Obedience is a complicated act of virtue, and many graces are exercised in one act of obedience. It is an act of humility, of mortification and self-denial, of charity to God, of care of the public, of order and charity to ourselves. It is a great instance of a victory over the most refractory passions.

He is a good man who grieves rather for him that injures him than for his own suffering; who prays for him who wrongs him, forgiving all his faults; who sooner shows mercy than anger; who offers violence to his appetite in all things; endeavouring to subdue the flesh to the spirit. This is an excellent abbreviature of the whole duty of a Christian.

When the clock strikes, or however else you shall measure the day, it is good to say a short ejaculation every hour, that the parts and returns of devotion may be the measure of your time: and do so also in all the breaches of thy sleep; that those spaces which have in them no direct business of the world may be filled with religion.

In the morning, when you awake, accustom yourself to think first upon God, or something in order to his service; and at night also, let him close thine eyes: and let your sleep be necessary and healthful, not idle and expensive of time, beyond the needs and conveniences of nature; and sometimes be curious to see the preparation which the sun makes when he is coming forth from his chambers of the east.

Husbands must give to their wives love, maintenance, duty, and the sweetnesses of conversation; and wives must pay to them all they have or can, with the interest of obedience and reverence: and they must be complicated in affections and interest, that there be no distinction between them of mine and thine.

Let the measure of your affirmation or denial be the understanding of your contractor; for he that deceives the buyer or the seller by speaking what is true in a sense not understood by the other, is a thief.

He that is envious or angry at a virtue that is not his own, at the perfection and excellency of his neighbour, is not covetous of the virtue, but of its reward and reputation; and then his intentions are polluted.

The negative precepts of men may cease by many instruments: by contrary customs; by public disrelish; by long omission: but the negative precepts of God never can cease but when they are expressly abrogated by the same authority.

No man is fervent and zealous as he ought, but he that prefers religion before business, charity before his own ease, the relief of his brother before money, heaven before secular regards, and God before his friend or interest. Which rule is not to be understood absolutely, and in particular instances, but always generally; and when it descends to particulars it must be in proportion to circumstances, and by their proper measures.

The state of marriage fills up the numbers of the elect, and hath in it the labour of love, and the delicacies of friendship, the blessing of society, and the union of hands and hearts; it hath in it less of beauty, but more of safety, than the single life; it hath more care, but less danger; it is more merry, and more sad; it is fuller of sorrows, and fuller of joys; it lies under more burdens, but is supported by all the strengths of love and charity, and those burdens are delightful. Marriage is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms, and fills cities, churches, and heaven itself.

Man and wife are equally concerned to avoid all offences of each other in the beginning of their conversation: every little thing can blast an infant blossom; and the breath of the south can shake the little rings of the vine when first they begin to curl like the locks of a new-weaned boy; but when by age and consolidation they stiffen into the hardness of a stem, and have, by the warm embraces of the sun and the kisses of heaven, brought forth their clusters, they can endure the storms of the north, and the loud noises of a tempest, and yet never be broken: so are the early unions of an unfixed marriage: watchful and observant, jealous and busy, inquisitive and careful, and apt to take alarm at every unkind word . After the hearts of the man and the wife are endeared and hardened by a mutual confidence, and experience longer than artifice and pretence can last, there are a great many remembrances, and some things present, that dash all little unkindnesses in pieces.

Life or death, felicity or a lasting sorrow, are in the power of marriage. A woman indeed ventures most, for she hath no sanctuary to retire to from an evil husband: she must dwell upon her sorrow, and hatch the eggs which her own folly or infelicity hath produced; and she is more under it, because her tormentor hath a warrant of prerogative, and the woman may complain to God as subjects do of tyrant princes, but otherwise she hath no appeal in the causes of unkindness. And though the man can run from many hours of his sadness, yet he must return to it again, and when he sits among his neighbours, he remembers the objection that lies in his bosom, and he sighs deeply.

Marcus Aurelius said, that a wise man ought often to admonish his wife, to reprove her seldom, but never to lay his hands upon her . Etiam vipera virus ob nuptiarum venerationem evomit, The viper casts all his poison when he marries his female. He is worse than a viper who for the reverence of this sacred union will not abstain from such a poisonous bitterness . No man can tell but he that loves his children, how many delicious accents make a mans heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges; their childishness, their stammering, their little angers, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society; but he that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home and broods a nest of sorrows.

Fearful it is to consider that sin does not only drive us into calamity, but it makes us also impatient, and embitters our spirit in the sufferance: it cries aloud for vengeance, and so torments men before the time even with such fearful outcries, and horrid alarms, that their hell begins before the fire is kindled. It hinders our prayers, and consequently makes us hopeless and helpless. It perpetually affrights the conscience, unless by its frequent stripes it brings a callousness and an insensible damnation upon it. It makes us to lose all that which Christ purchased for us,all the blessings of his providence, the comforts of his Spirit, the aids of his grace, the light of his countenance, the hopes of his glory.